Last Call (Last Call 1)

The carousel bar at the Circus Circus was on the second level, which was really a wide railed balcony that ran around the entire circumference of the vast casino, so that the banks of clanging slot machines were visible in the darkness below. The casino was, in fact, hollow; overhead, beyond wide-strung nets in the middle distance, acrobats in tight, sequined suits swung across the firmament on trapezes under the remote light-hung ceiling.

The bar itself was slowly rotating, and as Crane followed Diana out onto the moving floor of it, hurrying a little to get through the gate at the same time as she did and not have to wait for the next gate to orbit around, he remembered wondering if the Holiday Casino was slowly turning in place.

Mavranos was sitting at a booth with young Oliver. Diana slid in next to her son and hugged him, and Crane looked away from Oliver's expression of disdain.

"They think he'll make it," she said.

Mavranos raised his eyebrows at Crane, who shrugged helplessly.

"I'm going to take Diana and Oliver to registration and get them a room," said Ozzie, putting his hand on Diana's shoulder. "Let's go, honey."

She stood up, pulling Oliver after her, and followed the old man to the central barstools, where he apparently told her to wait for him.

Ozzie hobbled back to the booth, where Crane had now sat down across from Mavranos. "She doesn't really blame you," Ozzie said quietly. "She loves you, but naturally she loves the kid more, and right now she's not thinking very far."

"Thanks, Ozzie. I love her, too. And you."

The old man nodded. "Check into a room together, and use Arky's name if you can. I'll be in touch with you boys if there's any way you can help."

Ozzie turned and made his way back to where Diana and the boy waited, and together the three of them got off the turning surface and soon disappeared into the surging, chattering crowds.

Mavranos swirled a half-drunk glass of beer. "You still want those two beers?"

Crane shivered. He did want them, the two he'd mentioned back on the hilltop when the world was good, but he wanted about six others first. Why on earth shouldn't he get drunk now?

Let the pay phones start ringing, he thought. I'll almost certainly never see Diana again now, and Susan—the thing I'll be able to mistake for Susan, if I'm good and drunk—has probably gotten pretty solid by now.

But Ozzie had said that Diana still loved him, and that he'd call if Crane could be of any help. If he'd been drinking, he would only be bringing Dionysus to her.

But I can't be of any help.

The carousel had turned halfway around now. He was facing away from the brightly colored shops of the second level, off across the clanging abyss. "Sure," he said.

Mavranos shrugged and waved at a passing cocktail waitress, and a few moments later two cold bottles of Budweiser stood, frosty and dark, on the table in front of Crane.

Mavranos had ordered another Coors for himself, and took a sip. "How'd it go?" he asked. "I thought you'd be in jail by now."

Crane described his brief interview with the police officer. "I guess it was clearly self-defense," he said in conclusion. "He did tell me to let them know where I'll be staying."

"Huh. Listen, you should have heard young Bitin Dog on the drive here."

"Bitin Dog?" said Crane absently. "Oh, yeah, Oliver. What did he say?"

Mavranos squinted at Crane and wondered how to explain it.

The boy had smelled of beer, and Mavranos had realized that he must have got right into the ice chest as soon as Mavranos had grabbed the .38 and gone sprinting for the dirt road. That seemed an odd urgency, considering that his little brother was in danger over the hill, but Mavranos had felt that this wasn't the time, nor was it his job, to yell at the kid about having sneaked a beer.

But when Mavranos had started Diana's Mustang and turned north on Boulder Highway, watching the lights of his Suburban recede away very fast ahead, the boy had laughed softly.

Mavranos had given him a sharp glance. "Something funny happen out here that I missed, Oliver?"

The boy had frowned then. "My name—"

"Bitin Dog, I heard."

Oliver relaxed. "Something funny?" he said. "I don't know. Maybe it's funny that a kid could grow up in one night."

"Who did that? You?"

"Sure. My friends told me that life and death are all in the cards, and if somebody close to you dies, you just shrug and keep playing. I didn't figure they were right, until now."

Mavranos remembered the evening one of his daughters had been arrested in a local record store for shoplifting. She'd been fifteen, and when he went to the store to pick her up, she had been defiant, as if nothing now had remained for her but a life of crime, and she'd better start working on getting the attitude right.

So Mavranos spoke gently now. "You aren't responsible for this. You ditched him tonight when you were playing, okay, that's bad, but this isn't your fault—"

"What's done is done."